Poet’s Corner: P.B. Shelley–Mont Blanc 7

1 September 2026

(11 December 2015) We return with the final stanza of Shelley’s masterful “Mont Blanc”:

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:–the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

In spite of all the fragmentation, the feelings of being overwhelmed by the grandeur of nature, when the poet’s eye returns from its inward journey, the mountain is still there, the latent power is still there, still firm and immovable, a witness of the permanence of nature. The seasons continue to turn, from one to the next, and on the cycle continues, taking no notice of the works of man, that are, to the mountain, “silence and solitude,” empty of significance. We will be back on Thursday with another installment of the Poet’s Corner. Good reading!